We lived 2022 with urgency. Vaccinated and ready to hug each other again, we were ready to live again, to be better, and learn from failure... or not
Phew, how time flies! It seems like only yesterday when we left 2021 behind. A post-pandemic year where we augured clear skies and green meadows for 2022... although now that we meet again, we're not so sure that was the case.
This year we lived it with urgency. Vaccinated and ready to embrace each other again, we were ready to live again, to be better and learn from our mistakes... or not.
It's good to see you back here. In another Failure in Review.
Get comfy, let's review the good, the bad and the fuckupee with this fine selection of iconic fuck-ups from this 2022:
One would think that after being locked up and isolated from each other, as soon as we were given the opportunity to coexist, we would do it willingly and peacefully... but it was not like that.
Although not such a recent conflict, the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out just as we moved into the year 2022 and occupied a large portion of our newscasts and Tik Tok feeds.
Since 2014, with the emergence of the pro-Russian separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, tensions with Russia have been increasing. And it was in the second month of 2022 that Russia recognized the independence of these republics, along with a military mobilization in those regions and the announcement of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Throughout the year this conflict has been developing, and has seen devaluations, economic sanctions, NATO annexations and large migratory movements to countries neighboring Ukraine.
And if a war of this scale wasn't enough of a fuck up, the international press gave us a hard lesson in what we really claim to be interested in:
And so was the international response, coverage and outrage. In a region where war and human suffering IS unacceptable, and where violence is NOT normalized.
In the middle of 2022 there are still wars, whether we care about them or not, whether we want to cover them in the media or not. The violence in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban, the war between China and the USA, the guerrillas in Africa, the drug trafficking in Latin America and the violence in Iran against demonstrators and women.
When we entered the new millennium 22 years ago, many of us imagined a bright and practical future: love at a swipe to the right, an extra income by sharing my car with others, the pantry at my doorstep, a nice house in any city with just a couple of clicks...
And so it was at first, but naturally, these wonderful solutions brought other problems and dilemmas in 2022.
Today there are anti-artificial intelligence movements. Movements of designers, illustrators and artists who find a threat in these new technologies capable of designing and plagiarizing? with a couple of clicks and keywords, a spectacular painting or illustration.
Nor is it surprising. This was happening before, when Airbnb began to gentrify cities in a post-pandemic Latin America of digital nomads, when Uber displaced and mobilized cab drivers around the world, or when Didi Food created new but precarious jobs.
And speaking of jobs, don't even get us started on the massive layoffs at all those Tech "promises": Meta, Amazon and now Twitter.
This after being bought by Elon Musk, our favorite billionaire personality, who is swelling with money while many of us wonder if we will be able to pay our rent next year.
Yes, this 2022 tech promises have slowly transformed into a dystopia. Not that we are necessarily going there, but it certainly raises interesting questions to consider in the years to come... or not?
Climate change was the topic of much discussion in last year's Failure in Review and now is no exception. We warn you at once that it will be a very recurrent section year after year.
This year's 2022 is special because it comes with a lot of irony, soup and art, but little water.
Because last year, in all the museums of the world, a series of demonstrations against global warming was unleashed.
It was Da Vinci, then Van Gogh, then Klimt, Monet and others. Pastels, canned soup, black ink or glue. This 2022, museums broke out in a cold sweat in the face of demonstrations against global warming and the world's oil companies. Activists were looking for a way to attract the attention of the press by throwing a kind of cans at the glass that protects works of art, among slogans and signs.
But well, well, what are world leaders doing? They are the ones who have the most power to curb these climate consequences.
Well, that's what COP27 is for, isn't it? The United Nations Conference on Climate Change. Yes, the one that happened in Egypt, the one that is SPONSORED BY COCA COLA.
That's giving us a fuck up on a silver platter. *Chef kiss*
We don't find it necessary to explain the irony of Coca Cola being a sponsor, but it is necessary to mention one more irony.
While museums added soups and inks to their lists of banned objects, Egypt, the host country of COP27, saw suspicious delays in visas for activists traveling to the country, restrictions on peaceful gatherings outside the main venue, increased hotel rates, cuts to local NGOs, among other strange coincidences.
But hey, it's not all bad for the 8 billion people on the planet (a new record, by the way).
Just in December, the news broke that after years of experimentation, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, nuclear fusion was able to generate more energy than it consumed. What does this mean? It means that we have a new clean, unlimited and safe energy source on our doorstep.
Our last Fuckup of 2022 does not live in any particular country, and it surrounded us all equally. It was in the networks, in the press, on TV, on the way from home to the office.
It seems incredible that we have to keep talking about hate speeches and demanding basic rights in this year that was. Because between wars, irreversible damage to the environment and tech revolutions, we have not been able to finish being human.
We have seen it in Qatar, the world soccer celebration, where behind the scenes you can't love who you want or protest on behalf of women.
We saw it with Kanye, where if there is a platform for opinion, it is wasted with anti-Semitic speeches that have no place in society.
He was in the handling of the Monkey Pox pandemic, where we were able to do a better management of a family problem, but it was decided to stigmatize the LGBT community again.
Or she was in the United States, "the country of freedom". Where you are free to carry and use guns, but you are not free to decide about your own body if you are a woman.
This is how 2022 looked like. And although many fuckups feel alien and distant, it is not superfluous to take advantage of this return to the sun to analyze social (and our own) mistakes, to recover what we should learn. But above all, to decide what we do not want for this year that has just started its march.
We couldn't be more grateful for the support of our global community and to you, who made it this far and want to learn from failure to make (be) a better world.
Cheers to failure!
Cheers, for the people who share it!
Cheers to those who learn and improve from it!
Health, by la paz, the good use of technology, the environment and the cry "Woman. Life. Freedom" from Iran!
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Let's transform our perception of failure and use it as a catalyst for growth.
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